Automobile seats typically include a cushion molded of flexible urethane foam material to absorb impacts occurring during the operation of a vehicle. The seats also require several pieces of hardware for seat adjustment, for instance, a seat back lock and recliner, seat adjuster switch and wiring harness. These items must be installed in close proximity to the seat foam section.
In a conventional seat design where the seat cushion is a solid foam bun, seat adjustment accessories are mounted on the outside of the seat foam section. As a consequence, decorative plaques are required to cover the accessories for appearance reasons. This involves extra cost in both materials and labor. In certain instances, where mounting of accessories inside the foam section is desired, a section of the foam bun must be manually cut out in order to provide the necessary space. This also has proven to be a costly and labor intensive process.
With the recent trend of down-sizing in the automotive industry to produce fuel efficient vehicles, more efficient utilization of vehicle interior space becomes critical. Since vehicle seats in general occupy a substantial portion of the interior space of a vehicle, efforts have been made in the industry to design compact and space saving seats. One of such space-efficient seat designs is an integral seat where most of the accessories or hardware attachments are mounted inside the seat foam section. This design achieves maximum utilization of the interior space while minimizing the manufacturing cost of a vehicle.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a molding apparatus for producing a frame encapsulated foam article such as a seat which contains a built-in cavity to subsequently accommodate seat adjustment accessories.
It is another object of this invention to provide a molding apparatus such that it can be used in an automated production process to produce foam articles having a frame member and an adjacent cavity encapsulated therein.